"We are the only species that drinks the milk intended for the young of other species, and we are the only species that insists on drinking milk beyond the time of weaning."

"Perhaps we long for infancy and the peaceful oblivion of our mother’s breast, and if hers isn’t available, then we’ll use the breast of any lactating mother, even if she’s a cow and we have to kill her babies to get to it."

"As soon as she gives birth, the baby is again taken away, and she goes back on the milking machine and is raped and inseminated again."

"Though they would naturally live twenty-five years in the wild, after about four years of this dairy abuse their “productivity” drops off. They are then forced to endure the brutality of the slaughterhouse and be reduced to inexpensive hamburger meat, leather, and animal feed."

"Because each dairy cow is forced to produce far more calves than can be used on the dairy, her calves are immediately slaughtered, auctioned to veal operations, or auctioned to build beef herds and killed at one to two years of age."

"This whole industry is obviously both a result of—and a contributor to—a severely reduced cultural intelligence that has lost its ability to make basic connections."

"The whole dairy business is founded upon stealing: forcibly stealing calves from their mothers and mother’s milk from calves. We have become desensitized to just how cruel this actually is, and how it underlies, perhaps in large measure, our culture’s basic repression, confinement, and exploitation of the female and the feminine principle. "

"She cannot fight the hands that steal her offspring away, or speak to us in human words, telling us how deeply it hurts her. But it is obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. For us to ignore her suffering, and the suffering of her calf—hundreds, thousands, millions of times over—is to ignore and deny our own decency."

"There is a deep and terrible transgression in this, the unnatural coveting of the calf’s mother’s milk several thousand years ago, and the building of a whole culture around the stealing of milk, the killing of the mother and her children, and justifying the whole horrific thing by mythologizing it."

WHAT ABOUT DAIRY?

'Fundamentally, cow’s milk is a substance designed by nature for baby cows, not for humans.' - Dr Will Tuttle

Humans are the only species to take and drink the milk of another species. To do this, in large scale farms, cows are separated from their newborn babies and the milk intended for those calves is instead taken and drunk by humans.

"Over 700,000 week-old calves are discarded yearly as 'waste products' of the dairy industry. Most people aren't aware that in order to produce milk, dairy cows are kept almost continually pregnant. Unwanted calves (known as 'bobby calves') are sent to slaughter in their first week of life so that milk can be harvested for human consumption. " From Animals Australia website.

Health

According to the research conducted by PCRM, some of the health problems which have been assciated with dairy consumption are: Osteoporosis, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Prostate, Breast and Ovarian Cancer. Milk consumption later in life actually contributes to calcium loss. Research has demonstrated that people in countries with a lower animal calcium intake (less than 500 mgs/day) have a significantly lower bone fracture rate when compared to countries with the highest intake of animal products, such as the USA. For more information about these diseases and dairy intake see the Physicians Committee for Responsibile Medicine

Dr. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., professor of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, is the Director of the China Study, the largest study of diet and disease in medical history. His findings: High animal calcium and animal protein intake is the primary cause of degenerative disease. See the trailer of his film Forks Over Knives

Robert Cohen in his research discovered that milk is implicated in causing breast cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease, and chronic childhood illnesses.

Dr. Mark Hyman gives reasons why milk should be avoided and explains why it may be at the very root of health problems.

"A friend of mine called and said that he had spotted a stalled transport truck with a downed dairy cow inside. I arrived to witness a grisly scene. The poor girl was collapsed on the ground inside the truck, in a 3-inch-deep cesspool of faeces and urine. You could see her wide, terrified eyes staring into nothingness, her entire body quivering ever so slightly. But she was making no sounds. The other cows had trampled her broken body; she had bloody wounds and bright red lesions that were clearly visible through the filth. Her udder was swollen to many times its normal size. We noticed a ghastly sliver of flesh on a gate mechanism above her. (It was later suggested to us that this might have been her tongue. Cows tend to lick the sides of the truck in search of moisture, but when it's a frozen mechanized gate, that desperate attempt can have tragic consequences.) Our poor friend died that day, on the filthy floor of a bloody transport truck. We witnessed her body go cold, and her eyes stop moving. Her entire life had been enslaved and twisted by violence and prejudice."

What about dairy replacements?

You don't actually need to 'replace' dairy from a health point of view. Fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains contain the nutrients your body needs for good health, however if you like milk in coffee or like cheese or yoghurt, there are now non dairy replacements for all of these foods and you can find some of them in your local supermarket. For others, you will need to go to a specialty vegan shop or health food shop. To see some of these click here: dairy alternatives

Many of these dairy replacements are made from soy. Some people are concerned about soy and health so it is good to do your own research. It seems that the key is moderation and to choose food made from organic, whole soy where possible. soy